8.3 Stress in the Workplace

Sources of Workplace Stress

In most surveys on stress and its causes, Money, Work, Family Responsibilities, and Health Concerns have been at the top of the list for quite a long time. All four of these factors are either directly or indirectly impact and are impacted by the workplace.

There are many differences among individuals and their stressors. Why is one person’s mind-crippling stress another person’s biggest motivation and challenge? We’re going to attempt to answer this by looking at the three sources of stress—individual, organizational, and environmental—and then add in the concept of human perception in an attempt to understand this conundrum.

Individual Factors

Individuals might experience stressful commutes to work, or a stressful couple of weeks helping at a work event, but those kinds of temporary, individual stresses are not what we’re looking at here. We’re looking for a deeper, longer-term stress. Family stress—marriages that are ending, issues with children, an ailing parent—these are stressful situations that an employee really can’t leave at home when he or she comes to work. Financial stress, like the inability to pay bills or an unexpected new demand on a person’s cash flow might also be an issue that disturbs an employee’s time at work. Finally, an individual’s own personality might actually contribute to his or her stress. People’s dispositions—how they perceive things as negative or positive—can be a factor in each person’s stress as well.

Organizational Factors

There are several organizational sources of stress (Figure 8.12):

• Task or role demands: these are factors related to a person’s role at work, including the design of a person’s job or working conditions. A stressful task demand might be a detailed, weekly presentation to the company’s senior team. A stressful role demand might be where a person is expected to achieve more in a set amount of time than is possible.
• Interpersonal demands: these are stressors created by co-workers. Perhaps an employee is experiencing ongoing conflict with a co-worker he or she is expected to collaborate closely with. Or maybe employees are experiencing a lack of social support in their roles.
• Organizational structure: this refers to the level of differentiation within an organization, the degree of rules and regulations, and where decisions are made. If employees are unable to participate in decisions that affect them, they may experience stress.
• Organizational leadership: this refers to the organization’s style of leadership, particularly the managerial style of its senior executives. Leaders can create an environment of tension, fear and anxiety and can exert unrealistic pressure and control. If employees are worried that they’ll be fired for not living up to leadership’s standards, this can definitely be a source of stress.
• Organizational life stage: an organization goes through a cycle of stages (birth, growth, maturity, decline). For employees, the birth and decline of an organization can be particularly stressful, as those stages tend to be filled with heavy workloads and a level of uncertainty about the future.

Environmental Factors

Finally, there are environmental sources of stress. The economy may be in a downturn, creating uncertainty for job futures and bank accounts. There may be political unrest or change creating stress. Finally, technology can cause stress, as new developments are constantly making employee skills obsolete, and workers fear they’ll be replaced by a machine that can do the same. Employee are also often expected to stay connected to the workplace 24/7 because technology allows it.

As a side note, it’s important to understand that these stressors are additive. In other words, stress builds up, and new elements add to a person’s stress level. So, a single element of stress might not seem important in itself, but when added to other stresses the worker is experiencing, it can, as the old adage says, be the straw that broke the camel’s back (Figure 8.13).

Individual Differences

Those are the sources of stress, but differences within an individual determine whether that stress will be positive or negative. Those individual differences include:

• This is what moderates the individual’s relationship to the stressor. For instance, one person might see a potential layoff as a stressful situation, while another person might see that same layoff as an opportunity for a nice severance package and the opportunity to start a new business.
• Job Experience. Because stress is associated with turnover, it would stand to reason that those employees with a long tenure are the most stress-resistant of the bunch.
• Social Support. Co-workers, especially those who are caring or considered to be friends, can help protect a fellow employee against the effects of stress.
• Belief in locus of control. Those who have a high internal locus of control (those that believe they are in control of their own fate) are, unsurprisingly, not as affected by stress as those who feel they are not in control.
• Self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is an individual’s belief that he or she can complete a task. Research shows that employees who have strong levels of self-efficacy are more resistant to the effects of stress.
• Some employees carry around a high level of hostility as a part of their personalities, and they’re often suspicious and distrustful of their co-workers. These personality traits make a person more susceptible to stress.

If those potential sources of stress sneak through the individual difference filters and manifest themselves as stress, they will appear in a variety of physiological, psychological and behavioral symptoms. We reviewed the physiological symptoms when we talked about the definition of stress. Add to that psychological symptoms, like tension and anxiety, but also job dissatisfaction and boredom, and behavioral symptoms, like turnover and absenteeism, and you can see how stress can become an organizational problem.

Consequences and Costs of Stress

Today’s typical workplace expects quite a bit from its employees. In a climate of layoffs and downsizing, employees are typically expected to do “more with less”—that is, additional work for the same pay, often without updated resources and in a short amount of time. Demands for increased efficiency, quality and innovation can come at quite the cost, and employees are caving under the pressure.

A study conducted by Mental Health America (formerly the National Mental Health Association) suggests that stress costs US employers an estimated $500 billion dollars in lost productivity annually.

What does lost productivity mean? Let’s take a look at how employees responded to that 2017 survey, and talk about how it can directly (and indirectly) impact a company’s bottom line.

Absenteeism

What employees are saying (Hellebuyck, Nguyen, Halphern, Fritze, & Kennedy, 2017):

• A third of employees surveyed reported staying away from work at least two or more days a month because their work environments were so stressful
• Of those that responded that they missed two or more days of work
  • 35% said they missed between three and five days a month
  • 38% said they missed six days or more

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), absenteeism alone costs US employers $225.8 billion annually, or about $1,685 per employee. This cost, they say, comes from (CDC Foundation, 2015):

• Wages associated with unreported paid time off
• High cost of replacement workers
• Overtime pay for employees picking up their additional work
• Overall administrative costs of managing absenteeism

It isn’t just the loss of productivity of the absentees, but their co-workers who are affected by this. In an article for BenefitsPro.com, Mental Health American CEO Paul Gionfriddo said, “Overstressed and unhealthy employees contribute to unhappy workplaces. This means that the indirect effects on everyone else—the people who dread coming to work—may not show up in the calculated productivity losses, but contribute to them nevertheless” (Hellebuyck, et al., 2017). Indeed, this low morale, combined with possible safety and quality issues that can result, are uncalculated effects.

Burn-Out

Burn-out is characterized as a symptom of long-term, unmanaged chronic stress in the workplace (World Health Organization, 2019). It includes constant exhaustion, feelings of distance or negative views of the workplace, and lowered professional efficacy.  Burn-out is specific to the workplace and should not be considered as a phenomenon in other life areas.

Burn-out has become an increasing concern in the U.S. In 2021, 79% of adult workers who completed the American Psychological Association’s Work and Well-Being Survey reported experiencing stress in their workplaces. Additionally, 3 of 5 employees reported that their workplace stress also reduced their motivation, interest, and effort in their jobs and job performance (Abramson, 2022).

A 2015 Gallup poll found the main reasons for employee burn-out have to do with how employees are managed, rather than performance expectations (Wigert and Agrawal, 2018). The five factors that were most correlated with burn-out were:

1. Being treated unfairly at work
   Unfair treatment can include mistreatment, favoritism, and bias by coworkers, supervisors, or company policies.

2. A workload that is difficult to manage
   Employees often look to their supervisors to help regulate their workloads and look for others who can assist in completing tasks.

3. Ambiguity in workplace role
   40% of employees report being unsure of what is expected of them at work. Lack of clarity about job responsibilities can lead to exhaustion

4. Supervisor’s lack of support and communication
   Supervisors who are negligent or hostile create defensive employees who are often uninformed.

5. Unrealistic deadlines
   Supervisors who set unreasonable deadlines increase the stress their employees experience. Continually aggressive deadlines will eventually cause employees to fall behind.

Turnover

Here’s what employees are saying about the effects of stress on their workplaces (Hellebuyck, et al., 2017):

• Two-thirds felt they worked in an unsupportive or even hostile environment
• Two-thirds said they didn’t often trust their coworkers to support them at work
• Two-thirds said their supervisor was unsupportive
• More than eight in 10 said the stress at work directly caused stress with family and friend relationships
• More than seven in 10 admitted they bad-mouth their employer outside of work

It’s easy to see why, considering these sentiments, that nearly three quarters of the employees surveyed are either actively seeking new employment or thinking of doing so.

The Work Institute’s 2017 Retention Report suggested that replacing an employee costs about 33% of that employee’s salary, meaning that the average worker making $45,000 a year will cost about $15,000 to replace, when you consider advertising, screening and testing applicants, training, and onboarding costs (among others). For some harder-to-fill positions, this cost could increase to 50% of the worker’s salary (Sears, 2017).

Turnover also lowers productivity in that there is a shift of work while the position is empty and even after when the new employee is learning her position, and the employee leaving takes with him knowledge of the company that may not be recaptured.

Sadly, the Work Institute’s 2017 Retention Report also captured data that led them to determine that roughly 75% of all turnover could be avoided. When surveying their 34,000 respondents, the top reasons for turnover were cited as career development, compensation and benefits…and then three that are directly related to stress: work-life balance, manager’s behavior and well-being (Sears, 2017)

Workplace Violence

Workplace violence is on the rise, and it is the third leading cause of death for workers on the job. Of course, some workplace violence, like an active shooter or even an angry retail customer who takes a swing, is not due to workplace stress. Still, this kind of activity takes a toll on businesses, adding yet another layer of stress and a price tag of about $55 million in lost wages for the 1.8 million work days lost each year due to workplace violence (Lower & Associates, 2019).

But workplace violence rears its ugly head on a smaller level as well. “Desk rage” is a term used to describe extreme or violent anger shown by someone in an office, especially when this is caused by worry or a difficult situation. This can manifest itself in screaming and shouting, throwing or angrily destroying office equipment, or it can be more subtle, like damaging water cooler gossip, theft or abuse of sick time. The people who work with someone experiencing desk rage are as much victims of workplace stress here as the “desk rager.”

These are some of the results of stress that drive down productivity, but stress also affects the cost of health benefits and medical needs that an employer will pick up by providing health insurance. Stress factors into five of the six leading causes of death in the US, and a staggering number of medical office visits will, in part, address symptoms related to stress.

It’s no surprise to hear that a company like General Motors spends more money on healthcare than it does on steel. And (surprise!) workplace stress is responsible for up to $190 billion in annual US healthcare costs.

Goh, Pfeffer, and Zenios (2016) cited ten major factors of workplace stress and then mathematically examined their occurrences (and co-occurrences), concluding that workplace stress contributes to approximately 120,000 deaths each year. That, and additional healthcare expenses related to addressing stress related problems, accounted for $125 to $190 billion in healthcare costs, or about 5% to 8% of the nation’s total expenditure.

Managerial Approaches to Stress Management

Employees don’t just get distracted from work but get distracted from work by other work. Workers are sitting down to thoughtful tasks and being lured away by client emails, experiencing a new interruption every few minutes and working at a frantic pace. “Managing your time” used to be synonymous with “managing your attention,” but the workplace doesn’t function like that anymore. Time management training needs to change with the times.

Thomas (2015) suggests that, rather than training individuals on time management techniques, managers should spend more time on clarity around role priorities rather than specific task priorities. When managers can make clear to an employee what the expectations of their role is and how they match up with the priorities of the company, the employee can gain a new clarity on how to prioritize incoming work. Job design, its initial conception and its constant evaluation, are important in managing workplace stress.

Job design is also key in motivating employees. Skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback are all components that should be considered when designing a job, no matter how complicated or repetitive the job might be. Job design should reinforce the effort-to-performance link on the expectancy framework.

If job design provides the challenge that motivates an employee, it can also tip the scales toward stress. Managers can reevaluate job design to ensure that expectations for the role don’t exceed the employee’s abilities. They can also reduce role ambiguity by aligning employees around company objectives and helping them prioritize need-to-do tasks over day-to-day minutiae (Thomas, 2015).

While certain jobs are more stressful than others—consider an air traffic controller’s daily stress versus that of a clerical worker—individual responses to stress are also very specific to an employee’s personality. Managers should take into consideration how an individual might adapt to a high-stress role during the selection and placement process. Previous experience is often a good indicator of a potential employee’s suitability.

Another motivating factor for employees is goal-setting. As we learned in module 3, individuals should have specific, measurable goals that they can achieve if they stretch themselves. Managers should take care that they’re achieving good, and not bad, levels of stress when working with employees to set goals. Goals that tie into company objectives work to clarify role responsibilities, and managers who review their employees’ progress can protect them from demotivation and stress.

Finally, there’s the managerial option of job redesign to help with stress management. Redesigning jobs to make them richer for the employees can alleviate stress and add new motivation. A job redesign that gives the team member more responsibility, more say in decisions that involve them, and more meaningful work can give an employee more control over work activities and lessen his reliance on others. Each of these managerial approaches to stress management can be used as a motivational tool for employees.

But what about the effects of an organization’s culture on stress levels? Some organizations expect an employee to put in far more than the standard 40 hours of work in a week. Employees feel an increasing need to stay connected to email and voice mail when not in the office, and often their managers expect to be able to contact them by phone or text well after working hours. International companies expect employees to navigate time differences, and employees in the U.S. find themselves staying at work late or coming in early to have necessary conversations with Europe and Asia.

Organizational Approaches to Stress Management

In addition to careful job design and managing stifling company cultures, organizations are taking steps to help employees battle stress by offering programs, benefits and office “perks” that allow workers to make choices about managing stress as it best suits their needs.

Healthcare is an expensive endeavor for employers these days, and smaller, privately held companies are looking for clever benefit package designs that reduce an organization’s costs without costing the employee too much more. Stress and stress-related illness has a significant impact on healthcare costs, given annual costs for those stress-related health issues could be anywhere from $125 to $190 billion.

It’s not unusual for a company to offer their employees smoking cessation programs or asthma management programs to help keep healthcare costs in check. Now employers are looking to implement other wellness programs, knowing that stress-related health issues are driving the cost of medical benefits. In fact, health care providers are starting to support these client endeavors, too, recognizing the need to cut spending however they can.

Wellness programs are organizational efforts to help employees improve their health and mental well-being by offering company-sponsored exercise, weight-loss competitions, health screenings and more. Some companies are looking at a more holistic view of stress release by concentrating not just on employee physical health, but also offering financial management classes and opportunities to give back to the community.

Nationwide, companies are seeing the benefits of offering their employees wellness programs. 91% of all large companies (with more than 10,000 employees) offer some type of wellness program (Figure 8.14).

They’re a cost-effective solution to a very expensive problem. Furthermore, as shown in the second graph below, a majority of employees are open to participating in them (Figure 8.15). Wellness programs are a win-win for companies and their employees.

Now, some employers offer these types of programs and then get in the way of their effectiveness. In Joel Goh’s study, he pointed out that, while US employers recognize that stress leads to costly health issues and put programs in place to combat them, those same employers sometimes undermine those programs with stress-inducing employment practices. These programs don’t work if the employee is too stressed and overloaded with work to participate!

Some younger companies are going the extra mile to incorporate wellness into their culture and work environment. Google and Apple are headliners among organizations that offer their employees multiple choices in stress-burning activities throughout the day—like ping-pong tables, foosball, bowling alleys—and other perks that allow their employees to eliminate stress from their lives, such as free meals and free rides to work. Masseuses, available for booking during work hours, and family-room like areas where employees can relax and put up their feet go a long way toward employee stress relief and comfort. These are great examples of companies taking a cue from the ways individuals pursue stress release and making some of those methods available in the workplace.

Companies can incorporate stress release into their benefits packages in other ways as well. Companies offering a nice paid-time-off package that features use-it-or-lose-it vacation time encourages their employees to step away from the office and enjoy time with their families. Discounted gym memberships can encourage employees to stay physically fit, and companies are starting to offer easy, direct-deposit college savings plans so that employees can more easily provide for the education of their offspring. Some companies have gone as far as providing on-site day care for employees, making child care convenient and cost-effective. Other companies have a dogs-allowed policy at the office, where people can bring in their pets and combat stressful situations with a furry hug.

Finally, mental health is an ever-present issue in today’s society, and employers offer employee assistance programs (EAPs) for those employees who are struggling with issues at work or in their personal lives. Employee assistance programs offer short-term, confidential counseling to employees, complete with referrals, free assessments and follow up services. Where wellness programs and company benefits can’t address mental health and wellbeing, employee assistance programs step in and make it easier for struggling workers to find help.

These wellness programs and benefits offerings are companies’ responses to the individual needs of their employees and their ongoing quest for work/life balance. Not only do they foster excellent perception that they care about their employees, but they also address the very costly issue of stress in the workplace.

Remix/Revisions featured in this section

• Small editing revisions to tailor the content to the Psychology of Human Relations course.
• Added Burn-out section to Sources of Stress (Organizational Behavior – Lumen Learning).
• Replaced photos that were no longer available/had broken links
• Added photos with links to locations of images and CC licenses.
• Added doi links to references to comply with APA 7th edition formatting reference manual.

Attributions

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References

Abramson, A. (2022, January 1). Burnout and stress are everywhere. Monitor on Psychology, 53(1). Retrieved October 30, 2022 from https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/01/special-burnout-stress

CDC Foundation. (2015, January 28). Worker illness and injury costs U.S. employers $225.8 billion annually. https://www.cdcfoundation.org/pr/2015/worker-illness-and-injury-costs-us-employers-225-billion-annually

Goh, J., Pfeffer, J. & Zenios, S. A. (2015). The relationship between workplace stressors and mortality and health costs in the United States. Management Science, 62(2), 608–628.  https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.2115

Hellebuyck, M.,  Nguyen, T., Halphern, M., Fritze, D., & Kennedy, J. (2017). Mind the workplace.” Mental Health America. https://www.mhanational.org/sites/default/files/Mind%20the%20Workplace%20-%20MHA%20Workplace%20Health%20Survey%202017%20FINAL.pdf

Lowers & Associates. (2016, May 19). The impact of workplace violence [Infographic]. The Risk Management Blog. https://blog.lowersrisk.com/infographic-impact-workplace-violence/

Sears, L. (2017). 2017 retention report: Trends, reasons, & recommendations. Work Institute. https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/478187/2017%20Retention%20Report%20Campaign/Work%20Institute%202017%20-Retention%20Report.pdf

Wigert, B. & Agrawal, S. (2018, July 12). Employee burnout, part 1: The 5 main causes. Gallup Workplace. Retrieved October 30, 2022 from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/237059/employee-burnout-part-main-causes.aspx

World Health Organization (2019, May 28). Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: International Classification of Diseases. Retrieved October 30, 2022 from https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases